microblogging
December 2008 
Tumbling with Passion and Compassion
Posted on Dec 12th, 2007
by 
~C4Chaos
~C4Chaos
My teammate Jake has been reflecting on building expressive community. He said:
"Argue with me if you will, but I tend to think that the sheer customizability of Myspace's profiles and the application-overburdened nature Facebook profiles (a seeming paradise of self-expression) instead creates over-stimulated jumbles of things that are not-quite-me. LinkedIn's profiles have a singularity of purpose that actually expresses the employable-me a lot more effectively, but what about creativity?And even though most of these networks allow members to post a variety of different types of content, their focus is clearly on people and user's creations have to sit a few pages deeper.
"On the other hand, social networks for expression tend to be focused around certain types of creative content (Flickr, photos; Youtube, videos; Twitter, text notes) and make sharing your creations extremely easy. On those sites, your expression, your creativity, - your creations - become the focus, and the connecting power of the network fades into the background. "How, then, would the former kind of network nurture greater levels and depth of expression?"
Jake goes on to say that streamlining content creation, highlighting user content on profiles, and favoring content creation over lots of widgets, are some ways of achieving this "greater levels and depth of expression."
I couldn't agree more.
I agree with Jake that Tumblr does a great job at this. Microblogging services like Tumblr is at the edge of the evolution of personal publishing. I've been aware of Tumblr but I haven't used it until today. And I already love it! In fact, I'll even commit a blasphemy and say that I like it much better than Twitter :) It only took minutes to create my Tumblr site and configure it to feed off from my main personal blog. Check it out.
http://c4chaos.tumblr.com/
If only I have more Tumblr friends...
What I particularly like about Tumblr is the filter feature. With just a click, I can remix my stream of thought with people in my Tumblr network. ReadWriteWeb is right: "...remixing other users' posts and allowing people to subscribe to each other's messages was the stroke of genius that made Twitter a hit. But while Twitter is probably a descendant of a chat and social networking, Tumblr is a direct remix of blogging and social networking."
Here's a question: How can a light microblogging application like Tumblr integrate my personal blog and my main social network? Simple. Via RSS feeds.
For example, in Zaadz, members have an activity stream which is also generated as a RSS feed. Note that members have privacy and granular control of their activity stream. They can make their activity stream private, friends only, or public. They could also select which types of activity to include in the activity stream. But because I have nothing to hide online, I set my activity stream to public :) See the link below.
http://coolmel.zaadz.com/activity
This means that I can easily plug the RSS feed of my activity stream into my Tumblr stream. But the question is, do I like to do it? Alex Iskold took the words right out of my mouth:
"I do not need an aggregator of my online presence because it makes no sense. What I need is an aggregator of my soul that I can’t channel elsewhere. This is what my Tumblr blog wil be."
Exactly!
But once you have your "soul" aggregated, the next logical step is to find a social "place" wherein your "greater level and depth of expression" would be appreciated, compassionately critiqued, respected, and celebrated. And that is the gap that we're trying to fill in at Zaadz.
Access: Public
Implying that your soul essence can be transmitted by one of the 'media' options…
(just trying to stir it up, sorry :)
How about the inverse? I've been a believer that soul is about where you want to go, rather than what you've done.
Can Zaadz do that? Allow the input of what you need to do, what you're driving towards, and then help make a few connections, bring you a few of the ingredients…? And especially, help make 'occur' to you what needs to occur to you, so that you ultimately get a match with what your soul hungers for…
We've already built one of the other requirements for soul… the sense of belonging, of fellowship.
The fancy knowledge and experience capture – ala Tumblr, Twitter, TiddlyWiki, etc – while important, could be left to the other guys for awhile, while we really go for the gold…
“How about the inverse? I've been a believer that soul is about where you want to go, rather than what you've done. ”
good point, Chris.
of course, the soul essence can only be partially captured/transmitted by any media option (be it blogs, videos, audios, etc.).
“Can Zaadz do that? Allow the input of what you need to do, what you're driving towards, and then help make a few connections, bring you a few of the ingredients…?”
i guess it depends on how people will use Zaadz (or any technology for that matter). but as a baseline, we at Zaadz had explicitly stated it as part of our main goal that we even put it on top our terms of use :)
“As you know, we're committed to creating a unique place on the web. A place that's committed to inspiring and empowering people to live at their highest potential.”
we'll do our best to follow through, but it also up to our members to see things through :)
~C
“How about the inverse? I've been a believer that soul is about where you want to go, rather than what you've done. ”
good point.
of course, the soul essence can only be partially captured/transmitted by any media option (be it blog, video, audio).
“Can Zaadz do that? Allow the input of what you need to do, what you're driving towards, and then help make a few connections, bring you a few of the ingredients…?”
i guess it depends on how people will use Zaadz (or any technology for that matter). but as a baseline, we at Zaadz had explicitly stated it as part of our main goal that we even put it on top our terms of use :)
“As you know, we're committed to creating a unique place on the web. A place that's committed to inspiring and empowering people to live at their highest potential.”
we'll do our best to follow through, but it's also up to you to see things through :)
~C
Man, I'm digging Tumblr. It's a simple idea, but very useful: support posting well-defined formats of content, rather than just giving us an HTML window and forcing folks to figure out how to make it fit all of their needs. Hawt!
I like the Channels concept, too. I used to use Tags to create “channels” of content, such as book chapters or posts on a recurring topic. Channels are a more transparent mechanism for that.
Thanks for the tip!
hehe. Jay, you are now in my Tumblr stream ;)